On this episode of China Uncensored,
no backsies in the Hong Kong handover to China.
Hi, welcome to China Uncensored.
I’m your host Chris Chappell.
Well, you asked for it,
so here it is—
the reason why the British gave Hong Kong
back to China those 20 years ago.
Hong Kong today is under a weird policy
called “One Country, Two Systems,”
where even though it’s part of China,
it’s governed separately.
Mostly.
So you have freedoms in Hong Kong
that could land you in a labor camp
in the rest of China.
So why does the People’s Republic of China
have these two contradictory
systems of government?
And why did Great Britain give Hong Kong
back to China in the first place?
Well, once upon a time,
everyone wanted stuff that was made in China.
Because no one made better quality stuff than China.
But China didn't really want
any of the cheap junk
made by other countries,
like say, Great Britain.
Which sucked for them.
But then, in the early 1800s,
the British figured out something
everyone wanted:
drugs.
Specifically, opium.
The Chinese tried to just say no to drugs
and threw a bunch in the water.
As an American,
I guess there's something about British goods
that makes people just want to throw them in the water.
Anyway, the Chinese destruction of opium
led to the First Opium War.
And the British won Hong Kong Island!
The British had so much fun,
a few years later,
they decided to have a second Opium War.
And the British won Kowloon!
Then China lost a war with Japan
and the British thought,
what the heck,
let’s take some more land—
as the British liked to do in those days.
And that’s how the British Empire
ended up with the New Territories.
This time though,
they technically only leased the land
for 99 years,
as a concession to the Chinese.
99-year leases were a standard way
of owning property in Great Britain,
so they probably assumed a 99-year lease
really meant “sort of forever.”
Kind of like the way teenagers
borrow money from their parents.
Do parents really expect
to get that money back?
Little could the British have imagined
that a future government of China
would insist that the 99-year lease
should expire, with no option for renewal,
on July 1, 1997.
So for more than a hundred years,
the British built up Hong Kong’s
industry and commerce.
It eventually became a major financial hub in Asia.
The quality of living was completely different
from mainland China,
which had been seized by Communist rule.
But by that point in history,
owning colonies overseas was getting
less and less fashionable.
According to a cache of colonial records
the British government declassified in 2014,
“the Brits [were] mulling granting Hong Kong
self-governance in the 1950s.”
But the Chinese Communist Party
did not like the idea of a democracy
on their border.
So they sent a threatening message to Britain
that they would “not hesitate
to take positive action to have Hong Kong,
Kowloon and the New Territories liberated,”
from the oppression of self-governance.
In other words,
the CCP threatened to invade Hong Kong
if the British made it democratic.
But at the same time,
the Communist Party wanted the Brits
to stay and rule,
so China could use Hong Kong to
“trade and contact people of other countries
and obtain materials.”
So the best thing the British could do
for Hong Kong at the time was…
continue to colonize them.
Awkward
And the Communist Party was perfectly happy
to let the British build Hong Kong
into the financial hub of Asia.
Because ultimately,
the Communist Party had a plan:
to take back Hong Kong in 1997.
But wait a minute, you say.
It was only the New Territories that were on lease!
Britain would still get to keep Hong Kong Island
and Kowloon, right?
Well, here’s the thing:
If the British had insisted
on keeping Hong Kong Island and Kowloon,
the Communist Party could just make life
extremely difficult for the people there.
Like by shutting off their water.
Because almost all the water comes from China
and the New Territories.
So rather than let its people die of thirst,
or terrible B.O.,
the British were forced to deal with
the practicality that when the lease
to the New Territories was up,
they’d have to give up Hong Kong
and Kowloon as well.
Plus they didn’t want to fight
the People's Liberation Army.
But the British told the people of Hong Kong,
“Don’t worry.
It’ll be totally fine.
The Chinese Communist Party will respect your freedoms.”
It’s like when you tell your kids
you’re going to Disneyland,
but really you’re taking them to the dentist.
The dentist from Little Shop of Horrors.
But wait,
didn’t many of the colonies
that belonged to the former British Empire
get to become independent?
Like Fiji and the Bahamas
and like 50 others?
Why was the only option for Hong Kong
to revert to Chinese rule?
Because of a very,
very sneaky move by the CCP.
In 1971,
the United Nations had the great idea
to recognize the People’s Republic of China—
and not the Republic of China in Taiwan—
as the one true China.
And one of the first things
that the new Chinese ambassador
to the UN did, was to send this letter
to the United Nations Special Committee
on the Granting of Independence
to Colonial Countries and People.
Ok, I know this sounds boring,
but trust me,
it's about to get really interesting.
The letter said that Hong Kong and Macau
should not be considered colonies at all.
Nope, they're just part of Chinese territory
occupied by the British and Portuguese.
Nothing to see here.
And the select committee decided
that was okay with them.
Buried in paragraph 183
on page 64 of volume 1,
of their five-volume,
thousand-plus-page annual report,
the committee removed Hong Kong and Macau
from the list of non-self-governing-territories.
In a separate document,
the committee referenced China’s letter
as the direct reason for their decision.
Why was this a big deal?
Well, later in 1972,
the UN adopted resolution 2908,
which was a resolution largely about
supporting decolonization.
Part of the resolution
was approving the special committee’s report.
You know,
the one that was over a thousand pages long
that I’m sure everyone definitely read.
Just like you thoroughly review
the terms and conditions on your smartphone
every time they change
and carefully consider
whether to agree to them.
No way do you just hit accept
and move on with your day.
That would be irresponsible.
The resolution passed 99 to 5.
Basically, the Chinese ambassador to the UN
buried an obscure line in a long document,
so that when the UN members voted to support
the independence of colonized people worldwide,
Hong Kong and Macau were no longer on the list.
This technicality completely changed
the destiny of Hong Kong—
because they no longer had the legal right
under the United Nations
to be independent.
So with this legal manipulation,
plus threats to cut off the water supply,
the British had no choice
but to hand over Hong Kong to China.
In 1982, then Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher
visited Beijing,
and began negotiations over the future of Hong Kong.
At first, the British hoped that even if
they had to legally give Hong Kong back to China,
they could still be involved in
administering the territory.
If the Chinese wanted.
To which the Chinese side said,
“Nope!”
They made it clear that the Communist Party’s
sovereignty over Hong Kong
was the most important thing.
After two years of negotiations,
the Sino-British Joint Declaration
was signed in 1984,
establishing the handover of Hong Kong,
and the "One Country, Two Systems" model.
You know who weren’t part of the negotiations?
The people of Hong Kong.
And many were justifiably upset about it.
To Britain's credit though,
before they were forced to leave Hong Kong,
they tried protect many of Hong Kong’s freedoms.
The last governor of Hong Kong,
Chris Patten,
even expanded the legislative elections
to make them more democratic.
Chinese Communist Party condemned Patten for
that,
and called him a "liar,"
"snake,"
"prostitute,"
and "tango dancer."
Presumably not all at once.
And so in 1997,
the British left Hong Kong.
And the rest is history.
But for those of you worried about
the future of Hong Kong after our last episode
on what's happened in the last 20 years
under the Chinese Communist Party's rule,
don't worry!
It turns out,
we were completely wrong.
Hong Kong is just as great
as it used to be,
according to this news article
in the respected British newspaper
The Telegraph...
an article that just happened to be written
by China's ambassador to the United Kingdom.
And as we now know from this episode,
Chinese ambassadors are very trustworthy.
So what do you think of China’s
“interesting” way of getting Hong Kong?
Leave your comments below.
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Thanks for watching this episode of China Uncensored,
once again, I’m your host, Chris Chappell.
See you next time.